This image captures the faces of just a very few of the Haitian detainees at the United States naval station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. They include young and old. Their hands are raised in the air in protest of their captivity behind hurricane fencing. They are unprotected from the sun’s heat. A sign in Haitian…

  There is a never-ending debate in library science on what types of content should be withheld from the bookshelves. Subjects like pornography seem like a universal “no.” But between the obvious “yeses” and “noes,” there are shades of gray, as with the recent controversy over the popular E.L. James novel. Without clear-cut lines, it…

If you are a politically conscious person in the least, you probably have an opinion on Guantánamo Bay, the American Naval Base cum Temporary Detention Center for Haitian/Cuban Refugees cum Indefinite Detention Center for Enemy Combatants, quixotically located on the southeastern edge of Communist Cuba. Though the existence of the base has been public knowledge…

The location of a space is not merely geographical, mappable via GPS and defined by a specific longitude and latitude or address. A space is also a concept, positioned within an ambiguous region (e.g. the South) or only in a perceptual region (e.g. the good old South), and is defined by integral sociopolitical characteristics. The latter…

  From the United States’ imperialist pursuits in the War of 1898 to Guantánamo Bay’s camps for Cuban and Haitian refugees, the U.S. naval base in Cuba has been a space of contention.  In the post-9/11 world, President George W. Bush’s War on Terror has shaped the purpose and international public image of Guantánamo.  The…

  How much is it going to cost the United States to continue to imprison individuals at Guantánamo Bay? How long are going to keep Guantánamo Bay open? How many more are going to be imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay? These are three questions I urge all of you think about as we look at the…

The story of Dennis Miller, who runs the Cuban Club on GTMO, struck me as profoundly troubling. Having been born on the base to a Cuban exile in 1965, Dennis has no country—he’s considered neither Cuban nor American. His story illustrates the difficult decisions Cubans faced during the early days of Castro’s regime, but also…

    Why does Guantánamo matter? Why should Guantánamo matter to me?  How do we create dialogue on Guantánamo among an audience who may not be able to answer these questions? These are just a few of the issues I have been wrestling with since I started working on the Guantánamo Public Memory Project (GPMP).…

The presence of the United States Navy on the island of Cuba is not comparable to anything I have ever experienced in my life. In Minnesota, we are not familiar with having another country’s naval base and detention center in our backyard. Cubans living around the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base are all too familiar with…

In 1952, an eight-year-old, Dale Ward Gordon, arrived at Guantánamo Bay with her parents and older brother.  She stayed on the base as a dependent for eleven years until aspirations for a college education drew her back to the United States in 1963.  An interview that I recorded with her in September 2012 gave me…